Steve Ballmer: within 10 years all informations will be available electronically, nomadically and ubiquitously

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp., has answered questions from the French Developpers' community a fex days ago. During this session, which you can view here, he has been asked about 'what will it look like 10 years from now?'.

His answer is about a complete shift in the way we consume informations.

Look at the recent Google and Virgin America Press Release announcing that they will provide free wi-fi connection during the flights!

Look at the new 'Nook' device from Barnes & Noble, which is not only a new step in using electronic ink nomadic displays, but also a shift in applying the SaaS business model paradigm to books; you can buy, store, read whenever whereever you want. But you can also lend a book freely to one friend during 14 days like you would with a printed version....

Finally, invest some time in reading this: Mobile Web Is Taking Over the World (and Other Internet Trends). The focus of the presentation was on Mobile Internet and 8 key trends that Morgan Stanley has identified, including that social networking + mobile are driving big changes in communication and commerce.

What is- or will shortly be - your contribution to this great and quick shift?!

Are you already integrating these business models within your strategic plans no matter the market and positioning you may have today?

Yes You Can be a BizSpark ISV and create an innovative SaaS application to go-to-market in weeks!

Microsoft helps ISVs startups in providing them with a great competitive advantage: both a large set of tools and solutions and the right to use them as SaaS components licenses for several years at a cost close to zero.

With the BizSpark program ISVs can also be followed and adviced by a SaaS Incubation Center. The solution provider thus adopts the best SaaS practices from the very beginning

• focuses on delivering a differenciating solution and writes down a business strategy
• drives an 8 key-success-factors action plan to implement its strategy
• fully uses a SaaS based platform to get the needed scalability capabilities
• takes attention to the customers' support at the right time when then try its solution
• implements best practices listen-your-market and implement short-term roadmaps

You will find a very good example of such a process in this Case Study which shows how the Incubation Process helped a BizSpark ISV called Mobile Tracing Services to give birth to its Live-Task solution in weeks!

Key Benefits where:

• Makes fast time to market possible
• Develop valuable relationships
• Get tools to expand its businesses
• Use accessible and cost-effective service
• Enhance support

ISVs: Yes You Can develop a successful SaaS business in weeks!

• Some ISVs think that their solution is not adapted to developing a successful SaaS business model because they deploy it over months of dedicated customer projects.

• Some ISVs think that their solution is too far complicated to be delivered within minutes as a full Software-As-A-Service solution.
  
  
• Some ISVs think that their solution needs so many customizations before being used by their customers that they wil not be able to create automatic SaaS trial versions within minutes.

Fortunetly there are ISVs who go beyond these first thoughts and overpass them to make the jump.

• They discover that by understanding the key SaaS success factors - and it only take days - they can rethink their business model, their communication strategy, their marketing action plans.
• They also find themselves very adaptive and capable of rethinking their provisioning processes so that their complex solution can be delivered as a great trial version within minutes.
• They also understand that they can adapt their architectural design to better fit the scalability and security goals that SaaS drives.

If you still doubt please read this Octave case study!
SaaS Support Helps ISV Target New Markets and Launch Service-Based Products in Weeks
And Go SaaS Now!

Now even the government has an appstore!

The United States have deployed an application store which aims at helping agencies to benefit from cloud computing software-as-service applications.

The push to promote cloud computing is part of the Obama administration’s effort to modernize the government’s information technology systems and to help reduce the $75 billion annual budget for federal I.T. in the process.

I whish that other countries would also create such an appstore and promote the SaaS solutions as both a green contribution and an IT optimization solution! This may be the spark which will enlight the SaaS market growth.